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News :: Miscellaneous |
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List of Shame: Racist Attacks In the US Since Sept. 11 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Anura Idupuganti
(No verified email address) |
26 Sep 2001
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These attacks have targeted Indians, Persians, Arabs, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians alike. Keep in mind that these are only the reported cases of violence, hatred, and discrimination.
The dominant media has reported on a few of these incidents, but the enormous level of racist crimes is generally vastly under-reported. |
CRIMES & EVENTS:
1) In Mesa, Arizona, Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, an Indian gas station owner was shot. The assailant then drove to another service station where a Lebanese-American employee was working; he fired shots but injured no one else. (CNN: 9/14)
2) In Richmond Hill, Queens, an elderly Sikh man was beaten with a baseball bat; two others were shot at with paintball guns. (NY Times)
3) In Gary, Indiana, a man in a ski mask fired more than 21 shots from a high-powered assault rifle at Hassan Awdah, a U.S. citizen born in Yemen, who stood behind a 1-inch-thick shield at 3 am on Wednesday. Awdah fled as the gunman tried to shoot him again. (Reuters/Chicago & MSNBC.com)
4) On Friday, a turban-wearing taxi driver was attacked by a man who accused him of being a terrorist. He was of Indian descent. (Seattle Times/Detroit Free Press)
5) A car rammed into an Akron, OH Arab-owned grocery store by Jack Oueslati. (News Net 5: 9/16)
6) In Huntington, N.Y., a 75-year-old man tried to run over a Pakistani woman in a shopping mall parking lot. The police said he screamed that he was "doing this for my country." The man then followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country." (Seattle Times/Detroit Free Press & New York Times: 9/14)
7) Khaled Ksaibati, the faculty adviser for the Muslim Student Association at the University of Wyoming described an attack on the Muslim family at a Laramie Wal-Mart. "The people who screamed in her face wanted her to go back to her country," he said. "This is her country. She was born here." (Seattle Times/Detroit Free Press)
8) On Thursday night, a group of demonstrators gathered outside of the Madina Masjid on First Avenue and 11th Street in Manhattan. The mob yelled angrily and carried a banner saying "Destroy the mosque or remove it from this place." Neighbors shouted the crowd down as the police held them back. (News Net 5:9/16)
9) On Wednesday, a well-dressed young Manhattan couple yelled insults at a Lebanese-American who was desperately searching for survivors from the arts center he had run on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center's north tower. "They told me, 'You should go back to your country, you f--king Arabs, we should bomb the s--t out of you," said the man, Moukhtar Kocache. (Seattle Times)
10) Yasser Ahmed, manager of an Arab-owned candy and grocery store on Broadway in Upper Manhattan, said about 10 people had come in shouting, "You guys did it!" and other accusations. (NY Times)
11) One student, Basel Al-ken, whose family is from Syria, was taking his mother to Wal-Mart one night this week. A man in a parked car turned a laser-pointer in her face and made a throat-slitting motion with his hand. (NY Times)
12) Four men chased Amrik Singh, a Sikh who wears a turban, on Tuesday as he fled lower Manhattan to return home to Hicksville. He jumped on a train to Brooklyn and took off his turban and stuffed it into his briefcase. (NY News Day)
13) The local Sikh Temple in Richmond Hill was vandalized and received threatening phone calls. (Masala.com)
14) A Pakistani familyís house was burned down in Sacramento. (Masala.com)
15) One man stormed into a South Seattle mosque and threatened to burn it down. Another poured gasoline on a North Seattle mosque and tried to fire a gun at some of its members. (Seattle Times/Detroit Free Press)
16) A 57-year-old Punjabi man was shot in Yuba City, California. Several cars of Punjabis were vandalized as well. (Masala.com chatroom)
17) A student of either Indian or Middle Eastern origin was attacked on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Other colleges have reported similar stories of their students under attack. (MTV News & Seattle Times)
18) The Islamic Institute of New York received a telephone call threatening the school's 450 students. The male caller said he was going to paint the streets with the children's blood. The school is closed, but continues to receive several threats a day. (Seattle Times/Detroit Free Press)
19) A mosque in Denton, Texas, was firebombed, and another in Lynnwood, Wash. had its sign defaced with black paint. (New York Times: 9/14)
20) In Bridgeview, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, police stopped 300 marchersómany of them teenagers--as they tried to march on a mosque on Wednesday night. Marcher Colin Zaremba, 19, told The Associated Press, "I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have." (Seattle Times & Detroit Free Press/ Reuters: Chicago)
21) 43 percent of Americans said they thought the attacks would make them "personally more suspicious" of people who appear to be of Arab descent. (ABCNEWS/ Washington Post poll: 9/13)
22) 10 people were removed from an Amtrak train in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday, and held by the police and questioned for an hour and 40. Sher J. B. Singh, a telecommunications consultant, was one of three Sikh men escorted from the train at gunpoint, handcuffed and questioned about whether he had anything to do with the terrorism. The others held all appeared to be of Arab or South Asian descent, said Mr. Singh and Meera Kumar, a financial services officer at the Ford Motor Company, who was also held by the police. Those detained included a Hispanic and an African- American. "They broadcast four Arabic males, so four Arabic males is what we are looking for," Colonel Sullivan said. (September 14, 2001/New York Times)
23) An Indian girl was beaten to death in Long Island...Suspects are supposedly in custody. (Masala.com chatroom)
24) From Texas to Chicago to Long Island, there have been reports of arson, personal attacks and the police stopping men in Middle Eastern- style head coverings. (New York Times: 9/14)
25) In suburban Cleveland, Sukhwant Singh, a Sikh priest who lives at the Guru Gobind Sikh temple, awakened early Wednesday to find bottles filled with gasoline hurled in the temple's windows and flames pouring out. (New York Times: 9/14)
26) In Louisiana, schools in Jefferson Parish were closed on Wednesday after officials reported that students of Middle Eastern origin were being taunted and harassed. (New York Times: 9/14)
27) On Long Island, a market in Smithtown owned by a native of Pakistan was the target of what the police considered a probable arson attack Wednesday morning. The entire store was burned to the ground. (New York Times: 9/14)
28) In Ronkonkoma, a man was arrested on suspicion of waving a pellet gun and shouting obscenities at a South Asian gas station worker. (New York Times: 9/14)
29) Early Wednesday in Manhattan, a Sikh man said he was pounced on by three white men yelling "terrorist" at Broadway and 52nd Street. (New York Times: 9/14)
30) On Wednesday morning, three Sikh men waiting at Grand Central Terminal for a Connecticut-bound train were stopped and had their bags searched by the police. (New York Times: 9/14)
31) In Denton, Texas, a Molotov cocktail fashioned out of a beer bottle was tossed at a mosque and Islamic school, a day after windows were shot out at a similar Islamic center near Dallas. (Reuters/Chicago)
32) In New Yorkís Kennedy airport, law enforcement officers searched passengers boarding an American Airlines flight who appeared to be of Arab decent. "Anyone with dark skin or who spoke with an accent was taken aside and searched," one passenger said. "And they went to any male with too much facial hair." (NY Times & MSNBC.com)
33) An Islamic information service reported that a bag of pig blood was left on the doorstep of an Islamic community center in San Francisco. (Reuters/Chicago)
34) An Islamic center in Ohio received menacing messages and a bullet was fired through one window. (Toledo Blade & Reuters/Chicago)
35) One Muslim woman said she, her husband and their eight children endured a night of terror when an angry mob rose outside of their home in Oak Lawn, Ill. The woman, who asked not to be identified out of fear, said ``We had people riding up and down our block shouting obscenities. 'Go home you bleeping ragheads, bleeping a-rabs, we're gonna get you.íÖMy husband and I stayed up all night guarding the windows,'' she added. ``My husband is of Arab descent. He gave four years of his life in the U.S. Navy ... to have some skinhead with an American flag screaming at your house.''
She said the family was afraid to call the police because it would single out their house, adding that other Muslim families in the neighborhood were considering whether they should leave the area Thursday evening. (Reuters/Chicago)
36) Police in northern Indiana were investigating several other hate crimes. (Reuters/Chicago & MSNBC.com)
37) A Pakistani Muslim store owner was shot and killed in Dallas Saturday evening. (MSNBC)
38) The FBI has initiated 40 hate crime investigations involving reported attacks on Arab American citizens and institutions. (MSNBC)
39) In Palos Hills, Ill., two Muslim girls were beaten at Moraine Valley College.
40) In Evansville, Ind., a man driving 80 miles an hour rammed his car into a mosque. In both cases, police arrested suspects. (MSNBC)
41) Damage was reported at another Arab-owned gasoline station in Indiana, as well as at a restaurant owned by a native of Jordan, where windows were broken and the windows of a parked car were shot out. (Reuters/Chicago)
42) At Jacksonville State University, tensions over the terrorist attacks have extended beyond the Islamic students. Students from abroad with dark complexions, including one Brazilian woman, reported hostile looks, snide comments and fearing for their safety. (MSNBC)
43) Muslim schools in several areas have canceled their classes as a precaution against threats and reported violence. (Reuters/Chicago)
44) In Alexandria, Virginia, Hazim Barakat, a native of Jerusalem who came to the United States 11 years ago, said he arrived to open his Islamic bookstore the day after the attack to find windows shattered with note-bound bricks. ``You come to this country to kill our people. We want to kill you'' and ``Death to the Arab murderers,'' read the notes, according to Barakat, a U.S. citizen. (Reuters/Chicago)
45) The LAPD said 8 hate incidents have been reported in the city of Los Angeles, including four that have been classified as hate crimes --2 cases of vandalism; one assault with a deadly weapon, in which a gun was put to a woman's face; and an "annoying" phone call to the Southern California Islamic Center. Four other incidents involved racial epithets and slurs but were not classified as hate crimes. (Los Angeles Times)
46) Two students at Pierce College in Woodland Hills wrote "die" on a Persian Club booth on campus. An altercation ensued between the suspects and one or two students, but the victims did not press charges. (Los Angeles Times)
47) At the University of Southern California, some Muslim students have been harassed and some Muslim women have had their veils pulled off, according to Sarah Eltantawi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. (Los Angeles Times)
48) Some Jewish Americans express fears of being targeted for blame that this terrorism stems from continuing US support for Israel. (Seattle & Detroit Free Press/ Reuters: Chicago)
49) Arab-Americans have been singled out in airports for searches by security agents and assaulted by thugs, according to published reports. The Internet has also become a hotbed for the harassment of Arab-Americans. (MSNBC.com)
50) Fairfax County police are investigating two weekend bias crimes they say may be linked to the terror attacks. (MSNBC)
51) The Windows 2000 French-language spell-checker suggests replacing "anti-stress" with the word "anti-arab." The head of Microsoft's European and Middle East operations said on Wednesday the problem should be fixed in "a few weeks" and that customers would be offered a new version free of charge. (Reuters)
Follow the link below back to the original story for even more shameful additions to this list: |
See also:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=11365
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